Twitter Translation Center Opens Up

"Translators will be translating the product itself, not the Tweets. If you go to the settings page on Twitter.com and change your language, you’ll see what we mean," explains product manager Jinen Kamdar. "Crowdsourcing translations isn't new for us. Since October, 2009, we've counted on Twitter users to volunteer as translators and help us localize Twitter. For this launch, we created a completely new system, based on feedback from translators, to improve the translation experience."

"The new Translation Center allows any Twitter user to sign up, choose a language and begin translating immediately," adds Kamdar. "Translators can now help localize twitter.com, mobile.twitter.com, Twitter for iPhone and iPad, Twitter for Android, Twitter Help and the Twitter Business Center. We also improved the Center's search functionality, added phrase tagging, created special translator profiles, enabled commenting on phrases and much more."

Twitter is currently offered in English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, and Spanish. The company says the next languages will be Indonesian, Russian and Turkish, and these have been added to the Translation Center.